


Pennsylvania Love Song

by allegheny



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Crush, Fishtown, I don't remember why we made up this ship, Lehigh Valley IronPigs, M/M, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Phillies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22165756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allegheny/pseuds/allegheny
Summary: Just a few weeks after his call-up to the big leagues, Rhys has to deal with a crush.
Relationships: Rhys Hoskins/Aaron Nola
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10
Collections: MLB Exchange 2019





	Pennsylvania Love Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eovaldi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eovaldi/gifts).

> eovaldi, I hope you like this. It's pretty simple, but hopefully it scratches that nolarhys itch! I put some Philly love in it for you too!

Nola throws to first a lot.  
That's what Rhys realizes when he catches his fifth pickoff attempt of the inning. A runner got on on a single and now it's like an itch Nola's trying to scratch. And Rhys is the patch of skin getting picked at. 

It’s because of that long windup, Alfaro explains. Guys just try to run on him. So he’s gotta keep them in check. Compensate for that slowness to the plate.  
Still, though. Rhys can't help the electricity that courses through his veins when Nola spins around, locks eyes with him, and fires the ball over, nervous energy transferring.  
The ball snaps against the leather of Rhys's glove, that familiar sound, and Rhys always feels the urge to close the sixty feet six inches that separates them. 

"Dude. You have a crush, admit it."

Allentown wasn't the place where Rhys had met Scott, but it was the place where they'd spent the most time together. It'd be their space forever, that spot behind the IronPigs ballpark, on the parkway bridge over the Lehigh River, from where they'd throw rocks in the water and stare at the trains speeding along the tracks underneath. Just talking. Relaxing. Dreaming.  
They’d spend hours at their shared pad after the game, watching highlights from the big club that night. Most of what they saw was grim. So they’d fantasize, the frustrated and ambitious Triple-A kids that they were, about their place on the team and the improvements they’d make. 

Then, well, dreams had become reality, but for Rhys and Rhys only. But from Allentown, Scott continued to page him his thoughts. And these days, they always seem to be the same thing. 

"You've always had a crush on Nola, it's nothing new."

And yeah, maybe a good portion of Rhys's conversation is about Nola, and how he throws to first a lot, and yeah, maybe it had been about Nola for a while, long before he got called up and got to reckon personally with Nola's pickoff habit. Is it really a crush, though? 

"Dude. Even an idiot could see it, you're obsessed with the guy."

Okay, yeah, maybe he stares at Nola even when he's not starting, and maybe when he and Scott were gathered around their TV he always made a point to fix Nola's image on the screen to drink in the way his body moved. Maybe he has a crush, but even so, what would it change, if anything? 

"Well, you could do something about it!" 

Scotty's voice comes through like it's from another time, another reality, some place much simpler than Philadelphia and the Major Leagues. Where everything seemed possible, sitting in front of a TV in a post-industrial town that always seems too small for you and reinventing life and baseball like it's that easy.

Scotty doesn't know what it's like. Rhys realized very quickly he couldn't fix the team through sheer old will, and he also knows he can't just _do something_ about his guilty crush on his team's staff ace.

Even if he looks past the obvious — the problem of his career, homophobia, taboo, the whole thing — Aaron is... complicated.

Not complex, mind you, just complicated. He’s not hard to understand, he’s just hard to befriend: shy, religious, spaced-out. Rhys isn’t exactly sure what he believes, because he doesn’t let on much. He’s got the floppy wrist and cocked hips of a man much, much gayer than Rhys or Scott, but he’s also very devout.  
Rhys has heard he used to be much angstier, before his injury, a self-flagellating catholic boy despite his chilled-out character. Someone much easier to know, Rhys thinks. He’d come back from rehab much calmer, much more posed. Much more opaque. And Rhys has no idea which side of the rock face he should start his approach on.

If only it was just a matter of how hot Nola was — and he is, hot, tall and long-limbed, with his tan skin and curly hair, and his large green eyes and his pink plump lips — Rhys could just jack it off and away with it. But he’s invested in Nola, his laugh, his talent, the way he walks, his collection of Linkin Park t-shirts. He wants more, and he wants to be closer to him. He wants to know him, lift the shroud that surrounds him.  
So he does the unthinkable after a game they miraculously win. 

"Hey. Have you ever been up to Fishtown?"

And that's how he invites Nola over. 

—

Nola lives in an apartment on Broad Street. Nobody's ever really been there, but everyone knows he does. He's not exactly the most social guy; he never quite seems to fit in with the scenery, with his out-of-place campershell truck and his ill-fitting boot cut jeans, but at the same time, he blends into a crowd like no other. If pushed, he'll talk about the diners he eats breakfast at and the small Italian restaurants in Bella Vista he frequents, and despite the fact his face is printed on countless banners that line the city's streets, he never seems to get recognized. He's just an awkward guy with double-jointed knees and a Louisiana-themed cap pulled over his eyes. 

When Rhys came up from Allentown, there was the problem of figuring out where he was going to live. It's something that's pretty hard to juggle with his rookie home run race against history. But he'd found a place up beyond Vine St, in Fishtown, which the minor league coordinator had described as "hip" and "up-and-coming". The condo was in an old factory building, which was so charmingly East-Coast and so comfortingly Sacramento all at once to Rhys. It had beautiful views on the simple brick rowhouses of the residential neighborhood. It made Rhys feel so _grown up_, like a real person.  
Like a real major leaguer. 

Nola's his age, but he's been in the majors for almost three extra years, and that really messes up Rhys's brain, because Nola is both undeniably a peer, with his immature chuckle and his half-lost demeanor, but also an elder, someone who's been there and done that, someone whose presence warrants respect, that Rhys has to look up to look towards.  
He's younger and older all at the same time, and he's standing sheepishly at Rhys's door with a nice, pricey camera slung across his neck and a worn out olive green crewneck sweater in the humid fall Philadelphia air.

"Hey!"

Nola does photography, and Rhys had no idea.  
He likes going out at twilight, or at night, and snapping pictures of the streets, and the people, and the shops. It's his way of dragging himself out of the safety of his apartment, he says.  
He's still apprehensive of the city, he says.

It's so surprising to Rhys how easily Nola falls open on his corner couch as soon as he gives him a bottle of Yuengling from the fridge, as if he'd been waiting to tell someone, anyone, about himself, about what he likes (good food, photos, God's Beautiful Nature, walking and climbing and rowing), about what he feels (still unclear.)  
He's curious, and enthusiastic in a childlike, good-willed way Rhys didn't expect. 

"We gotta go for a walk. I wanna see the place."

And they walk through the angular criss-crossing of low-built streets, spotting tin fish decorations and stopping to let Aaron snap pictures of the colorful murals.  
And they talk about nothing really, about Aaron's old neighborhood in West Passyunk, about Pedro Martinez, his childhood idol, about the new stretching bands Rhys just bought to work out on the road. It's so... natural, that Rhys barely notices his heart pounding to give Scotty reason— he's got a big, old crush on Aaron, and his baggy pants, and his clunky belt buckle, and his slouchy grey sweatshirt, and the way he crouches down to pet a dog on a walk.

"I like this park." he says, as the Shetland sheepdog trots away behind its owner. "I used to go to a park like that to play catch with my dad and my brother. Same benches and big field of crappy grass. I couldn't run all that fast, so I'd be chasing after those balls rolling on the dirt."

"Is Philly like home?" Rhys asks, feeling emboldened, taking advantage of having Aaron all to himself and willing to talk.

"No. Not at all. It's so different."

They drag their feet back onto the street and along Palmer Cemetery, vaguely headed towards the Mexican place — the Mexican _jawn_ on the corner of Cedar and Norris. 

"It's noisy... and it's got so many people... and the streets are tiny and dirty and it gets cold and it's so big."

They halt again as the streets line up to let Aaron hover down on his legs to capture the skyline just south. 

"But..." He continues, checking the picture on the SLR's screen. "I like it, now, I think. I was really... I was scared when I moved here I think. But I'm getting over it."

He's got a smirk on his face, something innocent and self-deprecating, like he knows how ridiculous that is, to be scared of the city. Or maybe it's not, maybe Rhys only thinks it is because he loved Philadelphia as soon as he set foot into town. After spending four years in mid-sized town Appalachia, he longed for Sacramento's hustle and bustle, and Philadelphia was everything he'd craved for, with a charming East Coast flair on top.  
Bikes and cars always on the verge of collision, chatty locals, street cookouts, cowboys on horses dodging ice cream vans, abandoned jetties rubbing elbows with comforting dive bars, pickup basketball games on every court and the sound of metal bats and screaming kids in every park, everyone on foot, subway rumbling by, warm neons flickering, mean old guys in Eagles hats and sizzling meats in hoagie shops, that was Philadelphia to Rhys, and that was just what he loved.  
And the way Aaron's shutter is clicking as they hop to the next block, he's starting to see it that way too, despite the pull of Baton Rouge. 

"I think I like the people more and more." Aaron says as the bell on Loco Pez's door chimes and they walk in. "They're loyal, ya know. They act like they ain't but they care. It's cute."

They get tacos and Kenzingers and haul themselves back to Rhys's apartment. 

"In some ways, the people, it's like the humidity, that's the two things Philly's got in common with home. They remind me of my dad's folks. Kinda rough round the edges, but real kind, real helpful."

And Rhys thinks of what it must be like, growing up down there by the Mississippi, with moist nights and magnolias, and he looks at Aaron sitting on his couch, bathed in the evening light pooling into his living room.  
It's not so much of a matter of not knowing what he should or shouldn't do, just then. Rhys wants to give in to the soft honey-like pull in his chest and cover Aaron's body with his. He looks so soft and cozy, curled up against the cushions; and Rhys craves contact and closeness like never before. 

"The light's nice, here." Aaron says in that soft drawl of his as he flicks through the pictures on his camera. 

Rhys realizes the number of words he spoke tonight probably exceeds the sum total of everything he's said to Rhys ever since he came up. Is there so much more untapped inside Aaron? Does he have any friends to tell all this stuff to? Or— is he only talking so much because Rhys is Rhys?  
Because there's something there... in the way he leans in to show him a sunset picture of the church on Memphis and Berks. In the way he looks up at Rhys through under long eyelashes and heavy eyelids. 

Aaron shifts up, and lets Rhys sit next to him, right up against his side, and together they select his best shots, Rhys's heart beating a hundred miles per hour.

Back by his empty plate on the other side of the corner sofa, his phone lights up with a text from Scotty. 

"So? How's the courtship going?"

He doesn't even look up.

—

It's night when Aaron leaves and the cicadas are out, hiding in the bushes and trees that line Rhys's street along the front porches. There's a few kids rounding the block on their bikes, and down the street, out of sight, they can hear the speakers at a block party playing some song Rhys is sure he's seen the Latin guys dancing to. 

It's dark enough that the soft smells of asphalt and the soft sounds of the I-95 remind him of walking to his car to drive home from Coca-Cola Park, watching the day's last plane take off from the airport behind the Gulfeagle Supplies sign.  
And as he drove along the parkway, a silent, tuckered-out Scotty in the passenger seat, he'd daydream some more about the life he's leading now, the ballpark cheering for him, the major league uniforms... Aaron Nola with his soft curls and shy smile all tucked up on his stoop.  
And in the daydream he'd lean over, closing the four inch gap between their mouths to bring lips against lips like a ball meets the leather glove.

Catch, base touch— out.

And Rhys wants to win with Aaron.  
So he lets himself fall forwards, and lets his fantasy come to life, because he's stupid and he isn't thinking and it's very warm and humid out here, and, well.

It's kind of a weird kiss. A kindergarten kiss. A beer and sunscreen kiss. But it's a long little kiss.  
When Rhys pulls away, Aaron's fingers are over his mouth, his big green eyes open wide, looking like a perpetually surprised porcelain doll. 

"You kissed me!" He gasps.

"Is that okay?"

Aaron seems to need to think for a moment, his eyes dancing around the street. 

"... Well... I mean..."

And then, small, curious, a little bashful:

"... if you did it again... it wouldn't be so bad."

And sure, that's the answer of a guy whose secrets haven't all been told in one evening in Fishtown. But Rhys can hear Scotty saying I told you so all the way from Allentown when he pulls Aaron back inside, because the cover of twilight is not enough.  
He's not going to complain.

**Author's Note:**

> don't hesitate to leave a comment if you liked it!! I read em all!


End file.
